Friday, 25 September 2009

Our kind hearted neighbour was watching our last batch over our holidays and something went wrong. This batch is about a month old now and are a bit smaller than my nail on my baby finger. They have very little colour with only speckles of washed out black and pale yellow starting to show. One little fellow has some orange.

I transferred them to a larger tank today. They can't leave the water at this age in a net. It may cause deformations in the tiny fish so they have to be transferred in water to the new tank. I used a net to scoot them into a small pot for the transfer.

I added water from my large goldfish tank and their own baby tank water to fill the new tank up about 6 inches full. I'll gradually increase the level as they continue to grow. I keep a bag of the white ammonia filter material in the tank. This seems to keep the pollution level down since I can't put fresh water in the tank. (Our city water kills 'em every time regardless of how much water treatment I put in.)

They still only get frozen baby brine shrimp to eat once or twice a day. Once the filter is running I can add some dried fish food to their diet. If I do so sooner it seems to pollute the water quickly killing the fish. The frozen baby brine fish doesn't seem to have this effect. They are still a wee bit small to start the filter in the tank running so I will keep a bubbler going until they are larger.

As soon as I dropped the water in the large tank by about only 1 inch the large fish started to attempt to breed again. Unbelievable! I didn't even add new water to trigger this behavior. I've never seen this before. Usually they only breed in late Winter to early Spring.

The last time I had two batches separated by only a couple of days in the same tank, the older batch tried to eat the smaller ones and picked on them relentlessly. They are basically swimming stomachs.

Their Grandmother was a Callico Ryunkin and their Grandpa a Black Moore. None of the second generation had the moore bug eyes. Some had the ryunkin flashy scales and many were a beautiful chocolate colour. The Mom is a chocolate and orange coloured huge ryunkin shaped fish with a beautiful long flowing chocolate coloured tail. I believe the father is a white ryunkin with a yellow head, but time will tell.

8 comments:

very interesting to read...what on earth do you do with all your babies? I have a batch of about twenty some, too. Mine are outside. We have a well. I dug a not so big hole...stuck a hose in it...some plants and five feeder fish...I knew I wouldn't get babies because there were no precautions...but voila! Nature took over...I guess the greenery was enough to protect them. My fish just winter over, our winters aren't too severe...but twenty some are too many for the pond and eventually I'm going to have to do something. I don't feed them.

very interesting to read...what on earth do you do with all your babies? I have a batch of about twenty some, too. Mine are outside. We have a well. I dug a not so big hole...stuck a hose in it...some plants and five feeder fish...I knew I wouldn't get babies because there were no precautions...but voila! Nature took over...I guess the greenery was enough to protect them. My fish just winter over, our winters aren't too severe...but twenty some are too many for the pond and eventually I'm going to have to do something. I don't feed them.

i love goldfish but have never had luck with them. They seem to live for ages until I decide to clean the tank. After I clean the tank, and after follow correct procedure and instructions to the letter, the fish always end up dying shortly after. :( I'm wondering if it's due to our city water too?

Hi Patricia! Congrats! We've kept any survivors from the past. This is our third generation and largest batch up to date. We keep a few in a 50 gallon tank and pass others on to friends or bring them to the fish store. I try to pick ones that look like they may be female so I can continue the line. Unfortunately you can't REALLY tell until they are 1 or 2 years old.

Hey Serena! I wouldn't be suprised if it's just the water. I've wiped out whole batches of every kind of hardy fish by just changing a bit of water. Our city's water is notoriously bad right now and they add so much stuff to it to clean it that most people I know loose whole tanks of fish after a cleaning. (especially after rainy days.) Usually we all go through this around the same time so you can pin point the dates the water was at it's most damaging.

I just read this....ummmm didn't I get you stuck on fish in the first place? I get no breaks from you woman!55 sold to the highest bidder! They all died, seriously they said it was the water change - Ottawa was putting higher amount of amonia etc in the water. Poor Krusty.